Dog behavior and body language: A constant study

I am constantly trying to broaden my understanding of dogs. Understanding a dog's behavior and how they communicate, I believe, is the key to training, and building a relationship with them.  Often times dog's turn into unruley, uncontrolable dog's when their owner has tried to train them, but has little understanding of how a dog communicates. There are so many different scenarios I can think of and different outcomes caused by this simple problem. One, a dog that jumps all over people, and has a hard time walking on a leash. They're common problems, and have simple solutions, but people still have a hard time training dog's not to do them.

Then I always seem to run into people with the "vicious" dog. It's interesting to run into people with dogs that will growl, lunge, or even bite people and other dogs. Of course most people would think the dog has been mistreated and is acting out of what they've learned, but that's not always the case. I am going to make the argument here that many dogs act "viciously" on many occasions because they are afraid. There are many reasons why they may be afraid, and this is really where I'm really going to make an argument. I'm going to say the majority of dogs that I have seen that have bad behaviors like this have owners that don't understand dogs. A person who is niave about dogs generally doesn't understand that dogs do naturally have a heiarchy within their families. You are part of their pack, and there needs to be and alpha in the relationship. Honestly the owner of the dog needs to be the alpha member. I'm not saying a person needs to excersize authority over their dog. A dog will usually willingly let you have this position if you gain their trust and show that you are going to protect them. That's what an alpha dog would do, and so should a person who owns a dog. This idea is a little difficult to explain, and I'm sure I will come back to it often to explain more.  My main point for the day however is owning a dog means understanding and learning dog language.

Learning about my own dog has been challenging. He has many fears, and helping him gain more confidence and teaching him that life isn't all that bad has been a learning experience. He really does communicate very well when he is afraid and learning what he is trying to tell me has been huge! Also, I have gained his trust in most situations, and I am his protector, because of this I am able to teach him, because he is willing to listen to me and to learn.